On Monday, a 19-year-old Dalton State College student turned right on a red light, disregarding a “no turn on red” sign. That infraction landed Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a Whitfield County resident since age 4, in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Arias-Cristobal is now awaiting court hearings that will determine whether she will be deported back to her native Mexico while held in a sprawling South Georgia immigrant jail, the Stewart Detention Center.
There, she joined her father, Jose Francisco Arias-Tovar, ICE records show.
According to television station WTVC, which first reported the arrest, Arias-Tovar was himself arrested and subsequently put in ICE detention over a traffic violation late last month. A police report obtained by the outlet shows he was picked up in Tunnel Hill for going 19 miles over the speed limit.
The back-to-back arrests of the Dalton father and daughter illustrate the risks for immigrants who get behind the wheel while living in the country without legal status.
“More than anything, traffic violations are what’s leading to arrests,” said Jessica Perez-Salazar, founding attorney of the immigration firm Migra 411, based in Winder, which specializes in deportation cases.
The traffic-stop-to-deportation pathway may be especially speedy in jurisdictions like Whitfield County, where local law enforcement participates in a partnership with ICE known as 287(g).
Under Whitfield‘s 287(g) agreement, local officers can identify what ICE calls “removable aliens” when they are booked in jail, and then refer them to federal immigration officers for pickup and detention.
According to a police report obtained by WTVC, Arias-Cristobal did not have a driver’s license on her when she was pulled over.
“I asked her if she had ever had a license and she said an international license but did not have it on her,” the officer wrote in his report.
The officer handcuffed Arias-Cristobal and drove her to Whitfield County Jail. Shortly after, she was transferred to Stewart.
In an interview with Arias-Cristobal’s mother, WTVC confirmed the family entered the U.S. illegally, settling in Whitfield County in 2010.
Even though she arrived as a young child, Arias-Cristobal did not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that protected beneficiaries from deportation. Only people who have lived in the country continuously since 2007 were DACA-eligible.
WTVC also spoke with Hannah Jones. She has hired Arias-Cristobal as a babysitter and called her “the most precious human.”
A GoFundMe fundraiser has been set up by Jones to cover Arias-Cristobal’s legal costs.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the news station that first reported the arrest. It is WTVC.
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